Department of Trade and Industry

The hon. Lady makes a wholly valid point. I pay tribute to organisations such as Sense about Science, which try to bring about a good public understanding of science. I shall return to the point in some of my later remarks, but what happened over MMR—measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations—or genetically modified crops, for example, was media-led. The Government and Government agencies did not take a sufficiently strong scientific lead, but left it to the media. I believe that that is a genuinely important task for the Government and, quite frankly, we need to spend a great deal more time applying our efforts in that regard.